


touch me not, touch me not

by dovekiss



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Dark, F/F, Femslash February, Ficlet, Gothic, Sirens, Storms, Yeojoo/Sangah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22945096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovekiss/pseuds/dovekiss
Summary: As if she were one of the lonely, drowned people in her fairy tale books, Sangah stepped closer. A rippling wave crept up to her feet and wetted her silken shoes.
Relationships: Im Changkyun | I.M/Yoo Kihyun
Kudos: 27





	touch me not, touch me not

Sangah had always loved thunderstorms. Growing up orphaned in a gloomy castle in a forest that looked like a dark drawing out of a fairy tale book may have nurtured that love. See, at least when the sky stormed, she could hear _some_ sounds of the outer world.

She was sitting in a window alcove in a darkened, abandoned hallway, unaware that the torches were slowly dying out. She leaned her head against the glass and watched as the constant rain drenched the window from the outside. Droplets fell on the window pane with muffled thuds and merged into larger and larger wet lines that ran down the glass. A brilliant lightning crossed the sky from time to time to illuminate her fascinated and perhaps slightly troubled face. The distant, initially silent thunder went into a deafening roar. The trees nodded gently and lazily in the wailing wind.

The nearby lake looked as stormy as the sky, resembling a discarded silver mirror between the trees. The wind created a wave effect on the surface and made Sangah think of dark sirens and sunken ships. She longed to be closer to everything, to nature; she wanted to run out and swallow up raindrops. Most of all, she just yearned to feel, and not to just behind a safe screen of glass. She wanted to stand in the fresh, crackling air and be surrounded by water.

Feet slumping onto the floor, Sangah got up and moved away from the now abandoned alcove. The castles walls echoed with the quiet echo of her footsteps. The burned-out torches smelled faintly, emitting a scouring scent of smoke.

Flashes of lightning flickered through the windows at irregular intervals. They blinded Sangah for a moment each time it happened, piercing the glass, dancing their glittering dance and then disappearing. Right after, the luminous streaks were replaced by the rumbling thunder. Still Sangah walked on, the storm beating to the rhythm of her soft and small figure's steps.

When she realized she was actually running, it almost scared her into stopping, but not quite. She ran as if she were driven by an evil voice, a heavy and tempting voice. She breathed in deeply, trying to escape the ominous rhythm. The castle corridors seemed endless, unfolding in front of her like a labyrinth, the exit missing. Everywhere was so empty. Endless and empty. And she was lost.

And she ran away form herself as hard as she ran away from her stifling home.

She could hear the castle clock. It was too late to be out of bed. Their harmonious and regular strike of the clock tried to shout over the storm.

Finally, Sangah rushed into the massive gate door of the castle and ran out, into the rain. The luring sounds of the storm were even louder and more present now. They aroused respect and a persistent desire to be among nature and to blend in with the rain. She looked back at the castle and looked up. The bell was still tolling. But she could not hear it here anymore. She would have looked at the soundless bell longer if the urgent lightning had not blinded her at the moment, forcing her to turn her face away.

Her wet hair floated heavily in the wind, clinging to her fragile face. With frosty fingers, she grabbed the raindrops and felt them shatter and run down her hands. They were cool, but it was nothing in comparison to the coldness of the night-dark evening.

She wasn't afraid. She only felt a strange distress. Binding. An imaginary voice haunted her. Melodic. Was it in her head, or could she really hear it echoing across the castle grounds? Did gusts of winds bring the bell-like voice?

With slow steps, Sangah approached the lake she had been watching before in total darkness. The wind was gradually calming down, but that couldn't be said about the storm. The lightning flashed Sangah's way and faded, leaving only a glittering print in the sky. She was almost at the shore when another strike of lightning brightened the grim black waters with a bright, hard light, and the dark ripples on the lake gleamed. She saw streams of raindrops falling into them, like tears into bedsheets.

She could equally well see someone's silhouette.

Standing at the shore, Sangah felt herself freeze. Fear didn't stop her, nor shock. In a way, she had been predestined to this. She'd lived by the lake for too long not to see one of those. One of the sirens.

As if she were one of the lonely, drowned people in her fairy tale books, Sangah stepped closer. A rippling wave crept up to her feet and wetted her silken shoes.

"What are you doing here?" she screamed at the siren, as loud as her lungs would allow her. Her voice went raw as she shouted the storm down.

She may have been an orphan, and a young and lonely one, but she was still the lady of the castle.

The siren turned and her eyes widened in surprise. Her blue lips shivered, then thinned in a smile that terrified Sangah because of how _warm_ it looked. The siren's skin was velvety; no, terribly white. Eyes dull, yet with a spark of something that told Sangah that the creature must have been more alive than her, than any human.

Two small breasts loomed above the surface like pale little moons.

Silent sirens, Sangah found out, were way scarier than those who were singing.

"Just looking," the siren replied at last, turning away again. "There are no underwater storms, so I had to swim all the way up here.”

Persistent, and unhappy with the answer, Sangah took a few steps through the sticky mud and plunged her feet into the water. The cold swallowed her up.  
"Aren't you cold?" asked Sangah, walking deeper and deeper into the water, the skirts of her long dress buoying around her in circles of lace and ribbons.  
The siren didn't look back all the way, but shook her head abruptly. A strand of dark purple hair stuck to her mouth. Maybe she didn't notice it.

Maybe she was waiting for the moment when the human girl waded through to her and reached out to gently push the strand away.

Maybe she was waiting to pull Sangah under.

Sangah's teeth chattered. The water lapped at her chest now, black and moving in low but crashing waves. She stopped within an arm's reach from the siren and – then she did what the siren may have been waiting for.

Her soft fingers touched the siren's cheek, the skin clammy, and dead-coloured when Sangah looked at it closer. But tiny veins that ran underneath the pale skin were evidence enough that the siren was a living being, whether or not being alive meant the same thing for sirens as it did for humans.

The silent siren turned to face Sangah. Her long hair flowed down her petite shoulders and obscured her breasts. She took Sangah by the hand and led her fingertips, toying with them as though it amused her to show Sangah how much different she and her were, how void of temperature her face seemed. How dark her lips were underneath Sangah's shivering fingers.

"Do you want me to take you under?” said the siren, with dream-like pragmatism that can only occur when someone is having a dream or a nightmare and is aware that the chaos around them should be accepted without questions.

Sangah did feel like she was in a dream.

But not in a nightmare.

"Is it better down there?” she quavered, watching the siren intently to see any subtle shift in her face, any evil in her smile.

"It's not better,” said the siren, again so pragmatically, "but it's less lonely."

The lightning beamed overhead. Sangah stood in the lake so long that her skin turned cold, and as bluish and vein-patterned as the siren's.


End file.
